AEON 3.0.0

AEON 3 — a local-first AI workspace built from governed blocks. It runs on your computer, keeps your data there, encrypts your keys, and answers from your own files with sources.

This is the first tagged release. Download it below instead of cloning main.

Install (about 2 minutes)

1. Install Node.js LTS from nodejs.org (one time).
2. Download Source code (zip) below and unzip it anywhere.
3. Double-click LAUNCH.bat (Windows) or launch.command (macOS), or run ./launch.sh (Linux).
4. After the first launch, open AEON from the AEON icon on your Desktop.

Every setup question can be skipped with Enter. On macOS, a browser-downloaded ZIP can block launch.command the first time — open Terminal, type chmod +x , drag the file in, press Enter.

What's in it

• A terminal that takes plain English, / commands and drag-and-dropped files.
• 17 blocks — Aeon Matrix, Memory Core, Cookbook, Council, Deep Research, Files, Fleet Control, Orion Search, Security, Settings, Writer and more. Each is a self-contained folder; the kernel builds nav, routes and settings from its manifest.
• Second Brain — your Vault is indexed on every open, nightly, and on demand from Matrix ▸ Index. Recall answers only from what it finds, with the source file, and says so when nothing matches.
• Private AI, two ways — free cloud keys (Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter) or local models on a bundled llama.cpp runtime, installed from Cookbook, with nothing installed system-wide.
• Encrypted vault — API keys are AES-256-GCM encrypted at rest and never reach the browser; a recovery slot protects against a lost .env.
• Desktop icon — AEON.app on macOS, an AEON shortcut on Windows, created on first launch. Delete it and it stays gone. USB/portable installs never create one.
• No telemetry, no phone-home.

Recent changes (2026-09-10 → 2026-09-14)

• Desktop icon on first launch, and every open indexes new files.
• Matrix ▸ Index tab: a manual embed push, and a status that separates documents, embedded, missing, stale and pending. It no longer reports "embedded 0" when every document has a vector.
• A failed re-embed during a model change keeps the old vector instead of erasing it.
• .env has one path authority — portable installs no longer read the master key from one file while saving API keys to another.
• .docx support removed with its eight unfixed @xmldom/xmldom advisories. PDF, text, Markdown, HTML and JSON are read.
• Brand mark rebuilt from the vector source (a hollow chevron), antialiased at every size.
• Orion's web search depth control works (up to 10 results at depth 16, was 3).
• CI green on all five legs, Windows included, for the first time in the project.
• Documentation rewritten against the code, with a new gate that fails if a doc cites a file that does not exist.

Measured for this release

Tree [e25f5ee](https://github.com/cgomez1365/AEON/commit/e25f5ee8baef49f1c88ca643ba99e91277c2a10d) · 1,485 passing and 1 skipped (a Windows-only real-PowerShell test) of 1,486 tests across 131 files on macOS · CI [5 of 5 legs green](https://github.com/cgomez1365/AEON/actions/runs/34851105900) · 0 undeclared block filesystem access · audit gate: no unreviewed high/critical advisories.

Known limits, stated plainly

• Blocks share one Node.js process. A manifest governs what a block is given; it is not a sandbox against hostile code. Install blocks you trust.
• A clean Windows machine that has never had Node has not been verified. Windows is developed on and tested in CI.
• No Desktop icon on Linux yet.
• The citation gate (/api/retrieval) has no dedicated test suite. Recall through the Second Brain does.
• .docx files are not read.

Report a problem

Bugs and ideas: open an issue. Security problems: report privately through the security policy.

AEON Community License — free to use and modify; no resale or redistribution.